Holder sees racism in Zimmerman Martin shooting

FILE - In this May 15, 2013, file photo, Attorney General Eric Holder gestures while testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington. Four American citizens have been killed in drone strikes since 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday, May 22, 2013. Holder said that in conducting U.S. counterterrorism operations against al-Qaida and its associated forces, the government has targeted and killed one American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric, was killed in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen. The administration released the information the day before President Barack Obama is scheduled to make a major speech on national security. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

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The nation’s top law-enforcement officer told an African-American sorority Monday that he would lead an effort to change Americans’ beliefs and judgments about race, following George Zimmerman’s Sunday acquittal in the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin.

Attorney General Eric Holder blamed racial attitudes for the killing.

“We are resolved, as you are, to combat violence involving or directed at young people, to prevent future tragedies, and to deal with the underlying attitudes, mistaken beliefs and stereotypes that serve as the basis for these too-common incidents,” Holder told the long-scheduled meeting of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority.

Martin was a 17 year-old black youth in Florida.

“I believe that this tragedy provides yet another opportunity for our nation to speak honesty about the complicated and emotionally charged issues that this case has raised,” Holder said, while pointing his finger for emphasis.

“We must not, as we have too often in the past, let this opportunity pass,” he said, reminding listeners of the episode in 2009 when he called Americans “a nation of cowards” for not talking about race in the way he wished.

However, Holder did not use the speech as an opportunity to explain beliefs that he believes are mistaken, nor to offer data that shows suspect attitudes and stereotypes are either commonplace or incorrect.

Holder was appointed as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer in 2009 by President Barack Obama.

Holder’s effort to blame racial misunderstanding for the initial shooting is unjustified, said several lawyers.

“State prosecutors… tried to prove that throughout their entire case and there was no evidence of it,” said Hans Von Spakovsky, a former justice department lawyer now at the centrist Heritage Foundation.

“The jury didn’t buy it,” he told the The Daily Caller.

Moreover, “FBI reports are now also out in the public domain and the FBI itself admitted there was no racial animus,” he added.

“The Sanford Police Department did not indicate race was a factor when they were originally investigating the case,” Ron Christie, a lawyer and a former official in President George W. Bush’s White House, told TheDC.

“There’s zero evidence that for Zimmerman…race was a motivation,” said Tom Fitton, president of the civil rights law firm Judicial Watch, adding that there is even some evidence suggesting Zimmerman had no racial animus.